HoloceneMassif CentralcharcoaljournalArticlewood resourceWOOD RESOURCES IN THE CLERMONT-FERRAND BASIN FROM THE NEOLITHIC TO THE ROMAN PERIOD BASED ON THE DENDRO-ANTHRACOLOGICAL ANALYSISDendro-anthracological analyses were performed on 19 archaeological sites located in the Limagne plain and dated from the 5th millennium BC to the 3rd century AD. Analyses concerned different archaeological contexts such as fireplaces, post-holes and settlement sites. The data shows a change in wood supply with time, namely the replacement of oak by beech between the 1st and the 2nd Iron Age. On the light of pollen records, this change does not seem to be related to a contemporary change in local wood availability as beech forests were already present in the area from the Bronze Age. Besides, the higher diversity of heliophilous taxa, the increasing trend of the oak fc. charcoal average tree ring width and the proliferation of sites reporting more than 10 % of small coals -i.e. branches, twigs reveal a heterogeneous vegetation context which included a low undergrowth cover like as hedges and thickets. Such environmental diversification reported from the early Iron Age, which is further stressed from the second Iron Age, corroborates the land use pattern documented in the Basse Auvergne from this age to the Roman period. This shows a progressively denser settlement with a land plot network and villae. Anthracological analyses presented in this article are a series of particular case-studies which interpreted all together enable us to define the timber resource management history of the Basse Auvergne from the Neolithic to the Roman period.129-1392013https://hal-univ-rennes1.archives-ouvertes.fr/hal-01147544HAL Archives Ouvertes